Bastard Sons of The Father: James Robinson Leaves DC

Well, there goes all my hopes for another Starman story… or worse: here comes another Goddamned Starman story.

Allow me to explain. Yesterday, via Twitter, the magical service that allows people to reach into my life across time and space to show me the things that they are about to have for dinner,  DC Comics’s Earth 2 writer James Robinson announced that he is leaving that book.

So as of today I am leaving Earth 2 with Issue #16.It’s been a blast.Man, it’s a lovely day.Think I’ll take Rex to the beach.

— JamesDRobinson (@JamesDRobinson) May 17, 2013

Okay, that’s a bummer, especially considering that when it comes to alternate versions of classic heroes, Robinson is one of the best in the business – so good that the characterizations in his Elseworld’s story The Golden Age became, pre-New 52, part of DC’s Golden Age canon.

But hey: maybe this was good news! Maybe Robinson was freeing himself up to do that last Starman story he’s always been saying he wants to do! Maybe it means that he’s clearing himself up to do a complete new Starman series! Maybe it means –

Oh, what’s that? It means nothing of the sort?

Pulling The Pin: Justice League of America #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe – here in this great Hall of Justice – are the most powerful forces of spoilers ever assembled.

This isn’t like The Suicide Squad.

– Steve Trevor

Actually, Justice League of America #1, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by David Finch, is a lot like Suicide Squad, in that it’s got Amanda Waller making unique and intriguing personal offers to fringe people with super powers to join a team controlled by the government to perform missions for the government’s purposes. It’s also a lot like Keith Giffen’s and J. M. DeMatteis’s early issues of their late 80’s Justice League, in that it is attempting to lay the groundwork for and justify a Justice League packed with second-stringers and also-rans. It’s also a lot like Brad Meltzer’s post-Identity Crisis run on Justice League of America, in that it’s got as many sequences of people looking at pictures of, and talking about, superheroes as it does sequences of people actually, you know, doing stuff.

Two of these similarities are good things.

Look, as an opening issue of a book trying to justify the creation of a second Justice League when there’s a perfectly good one that’s only a year and a half old, this is a perfectly acceptable story that delivers the necessary exposition required to justify the concept and to introduce characters who are either relatively new since the New 52 reboot, or who have been around in their own titles, albeit with sales numbers low enough to warrant a whole new introduction (I’m looking at you, Hawkman). And it does it with enough mysterious teases and interesting secrets to justify their willingness to join this team to keep things intriguing… with one exception. In one case, using a single word balloon, Johns shows himself to be playing with some serious fire. Fire that, if he handles it well, will thrill anyone who read comics through the 1990… and that conversely, if he screws it up, will make a fairly significant niche fanbase turn on him like he insulted their mothers, and make the attempted rehabilitation of Vibe seem like a low-risk venture.